


If She Were Someone Else

by kangelique



Series: The Captain Swan Playlist [11]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: "When I win your heart", Angst, Canon Compliant, Deleted Scene, Deleted kiss, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Expanded talk, F/M, Feels, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Hurting Emma, Neal's an asshole, Patient Killian, Scared Emma, They should have kissed in this scene, Why the hell didn't they..., season 3 episode 7
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-17
Updated: 2020-05-17
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:54:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24188479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kangelique/pseuds/kangelique
Summary: Ten years ago Emma Swan used to be different. With rickety black glasses and a swinging free, swinging careless ponytail, chasing after a guy who was gonna teach her all these neat little tricks to help her survive on the streets. And even better than that? He chose her to be his partner in crime. But then she stole the watches and he took them without taking her. Suddenly that girl is gone.Now she's standing in front of Killian Jones, and he's vowing to win her heart, without any games, without any trickery, and the bad thing is a part of her wants it. Except wanting is dangerous. After all her whole life is an example of that.Unfortunately none of that is stopping their chests from meeting in the middle or their tongues from spiraling together -Again(Her weakness is unbelievable)
Relationships: Captain Hook | Killian Jones/Emma Swan
Series: The Captain Swan Playlist [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1327670
Comments: 7
Kudos: 50
Collections: Once Upon A Time Fanfics





	If She Were Someone Else

**If She Were Someone Else:**

_I've thought this through a thousand times,_

_What I would do to make you mine,_

_Others girls can play their games but I would rather play it safe,_

_Nobody gets hurt that way,_

_But If I were someone else,_

_I'd be braver and I wouldn't hesitate,_

_The entire room would just fall away,_

_If I were someone else_

**********

Branches cracked softly underfoot. The thick, dark green leaves brushed aside the only thing breaking the eerie silence that always seemed to belong to the jungle and their own quiet atmosphere that had fallen over them like an unneeded, suffocating blanket. Evening had slipped in a few hours ago, unnoticed as they kept their eyes peeled for Pan or his Lost Boys, and with it returned the bright, twinkling specks on the inky blue sky, replacing the sun but not the sun’s heat.

Apparently summer was the permanent season on this damn island, if the beads of sweat springing to her forehead and clinging to her lower lip and sticking her ratty shirt to her upper arms and back had any say in it. If she had to pick, it was the humidity that was more bearable when cornered by Hook’s weird silence behind her and the tension oozing off Neal in waves in front of her. 

Great. She should have just taken her chances, saved herself the trouble of having her ex and her...whatever Hook was in the same place.. _A one time thing, Emma, he’s your one time thing_. Her slightly, uneven panting mirrored Neal’s, both of them never been good at running more than a short distance, but it suddenly rose when a flash _of warm lips crashing into hers, teeth clashing roughly against her own, grazing as their mouths slanted, hot tongues tangling, and calloused fingers losing themselves in her hair_ rooted her to the ground, and just in time too, as they emerged into a bushy undergrowth.

She blinked the memory away as Hook stilled over her shoulder, settling his hand over his belt buckle, and Neal turned around with a grave face. 

“We’ll have to cut our way through,” Neal sighed. 

Her attention instantly rapted, and she reached behind her strap and smoothly pulled out the cutlass resting on her back. “Here, use this,” Emma said, just on the wrong side of eager as she held it towards Neal. Hook hissed and she glanced at him. Was it Pan? She caught the clench of his teeth as he turned the other cheek, side of his lips shooting down in a barely masked grimace. Her eyebrows furrowed, concern itching her feet a few steps closer, and mouth opened to demand why he’d brushed his leather cuff across his cheek when Neal grabbed the handle and her gaze spun on him. 

Neal’s eyes shortly traveled the silver blade, and Emma tried to ignore the onslaught of memories striking her across the face, unpleasant after a decade's worth of pondering.

Seventeen year old girl with rickety black glasses and a swinging free, swinging careless ponytail. Finally out of the system, and chasing this cool guy she’d met for answers, looking up to him because he knew all this neat little tricks that would help her survive on the streets. And even better? He’d chosen her to be his partner in crime. For a while. 

“My cutlass,” Neal said softly, reverently. His eyes flashed to hers. “You found it in the cave?”

“No, actually Hook gave it to me.” _When we thought you were dead. When we were having a moment of...something._

“Since when are you sentimental?” Neal directed the question past her shoulder, where Hook’s head hung, lips twisting. His head gently swayed to the side as he brought his gaze up, betraying blue eyes drifting to the jungle before he clicked his tongue. 

“I thought Emma would wish to have something to remember you by.” 

Neal didn’t frown or smile, just weighed the cutlass in his palm, getting the feel of the handle, but like her, he’d never mastered hiding his emotions either. “Oh thanks, she’s got me now,” he replied swiftly, with barely repressed spite on his face as he turned around and slashed at the undergrowth. If his tone didn’t give him away too, it was his hunched shoulders as he moved in deeper, silently fuming about something. 

What the hell was going on?

“What was that about?” Emma raised a hand to stop Hook’s escape, fingertips almost colliding with his chest before she shook her head slightly and curled her fingers back into her fist. They couldn’t do this. This hostile current between the two of them would only serve as a distraction. Dammit, their one time thing was already a distraction!

He sighed and arched his eyebrows, tapping his foot, maybe regrettably. “I assumed he’d heard my secret and…” Staring at her from under long lashes, a dread invaded her stomach, but his chin stuck out as he raised his head. “I also assumed you’d told him of our shared moment.”

“Why would you assume that?” 

He shrugged a shoulder gently, but they were beyond trying to pretend talking about a kiss was casual. A swirling sadness penetrated the blue and her heart when he blinked and squeezed his eyebrows closer. “Because I was hoping it meant something,” Hook said softly. Did it?

They’d returned to the campsite and she’d been feeling good and light and they’d restored hope to Henry, and she’d wanted to share it with someone. But it couldn’t be with Regina or her mom because she hadn’t approved of Regina’s methods and she’d been too busy making out with her dad anyway and well, he was there, emitting safety with his presence, emitting you can tell me anything, and she could, without words.

So she’d grabbed him by the lapels of his waistcoat, and at first it’d been an outlet, getting rid of this overwhelming feeling of good and relief and all this tension festering between them since the beanstalk, but then she couldn’t stop, then their heads were tilting and their pulse was increasing with each slide of their tongues and their wrecked noises were drowning out the night. 

Emma pursed her lips. Didn’t matter. Back to the present, back to reality. “What meant something was that you told us Neal was still alive,” she said and she almost paused as he swallowed his disappointment, reaching out a hand to his arm for...what? For comfort, for gratitude? Fuck. Her hand fell numbly against her side. “Thank you,” Emma finally decided, “I realize you could have kept Pan’s information to yourself.”

“Why would I have done that.”

“I don’t know,” Emma replied, ignoring the challenge in his words. She was a fighter, sure, and she would fight his _Until I met you_ before it had a chance to crash through her walls again, and leave her with nothing but a couple of bricks against the pain of the past, against Neal once again a knife poking at her ribs.

She shrugged. “Maybe Pan offered you a deal, why else would he tell you?” 

More importantly, why didn’t he take it? If he was a pirate. 

“It was a test.” Emma stilled. Of course it was. She glanced back, lying to herself that it was to check on Neal and his progress but really it was to mentally prepare herself for the next words tinged with promise and weight she didn’t want to carry. She turned her head, startled by the cerulean depths waiting for her. “He wanted to see if I’d leave an old friend to die even if that same friend happens to be vying for the same woman I am.”

Her. 

He wanted her. 

“And you chose your friend?” she asked, sounding unconvinced, close to mocking. 

His lips tweaked in a faint grimace, the sting of what she’d said crossing his raised features. “Does that surprise you?”

Maybe. No. “You are a pirate,” Emma scoffed softly. She did it again. She hurt him before he could hurt her first. 

He wasn’t supposed to stay, always sailing where the wind blows. Looking for the next adventure, shifting his allegiance according to his selfish nature. As far as Emma was aware, the wind wasn’t pointing so favorbly in their direction. Yet he offered his ship and his services, he chose to save a man who hated his guts, he kept proving and proving and her excuses were running dry. 

Why couldn’t he disappoint her too?

He stared at her, disbelief widening his eyes, and a look of failure accompanied the tight-lipped smile when his gaze strayed to the ground. Their feet were inches apart and the distance shot relief through her chest because they _needed_ the distance, and she _needed_ to be wrong about him.

“Yeah, that I am. But I also believe in good form,” he said as he looked up and her shoulders rose with her breathing as he took a step forward, invading her space, her walls, her rational _don’t do this, don’t do this_ with the heat radiating off his body and showering over her arms. The scent of rum carried by his breath as she tilted her head towards his mouth tempted her to feel good again, to let go, and her eyelids fluttered while her deep breath caught in her throat, falling prey to the determination settling in his blue, somehow bluer pupils as he spoke, “So when I win your heart, Emma, and I will win it, it will not be because of any trickery, it will be because you want me.”

  
She’d wanted Tallahasse and a semblance of home, and it had led her to a dank cell with four grey walls as isolating as if she were in a crappy group home. She’d wanted a nice family, wanted to believe this time it would stick, but Every. Single. Time they threw her back into the system like it was nothing, like maybe it was time to give up, even at five years old she’d already missed her chance.

Wanting was dangerous. Nothing had taught her that more than life. 

“Don’t,” Emma said shakily, biting down hard on the lie as the frown threatened to rip her face. “You don’t know me.” 

He didn’t know the girl who’d hotwired a car with a rock and screwdriver, didn’t know she’d remembered Neal hated mayonnaise but loved jelly doughnuts, didn’t know she’d met him when she was alone, so alone and done, with walls tired of holding themselves strong against strangers, didn’t know she’d fallen in love trusting him only for her heart to crack in two when she hit the sidewalk, and she couldn’t find her breath in months after the unfair set of cards she’d been dealt. 

Hook blinked, taken aback. “Alas, I know you better than you know yourself.”

“What makes you say that?” Emma spit. Her body trembled with the force of her walls trying to crumble because he knew her, he knew love had been all too rare in her life, he knew his burning sincerity was weakening her knees and she was this close to grabbing him by the collar and shouting at hin that she hated it, hated that he knew her, maybe more than her family, maybe more than Neal. 

His expression softened, and he dropped his voice to a low whisper like she was a deer in the headlights. “I know you would rather play it safe because you believe neither of us, and more importantly, you love, won’t get hurt that way.” 

Bingo. 

“You’re right,” Emma blurted, clenching her fists as she stepped forward, intent on what? Who knows. A hardness had claimed her vision but the moment Hook’s warm gaze met hers, the fight zapped from her shoulders and her kneecaps cracked under his intense stare, _the more_ brewing a storm in his eyes stiffening her spine because her ability to give more was in short supply, had been the second the cool metal cuffs were clicking with a finality around her wrists, tight with the realization that the watches were gone and they were never coming back.

Hook’s face wobbled and she squeezed her eyes shut against the blur, thankfully suppressing the tears with a sharp inhale through her nose. Time to be honest. “Look, and _maybe_ if I were someone else, I’d be braver and I wouldn’t hesitate. But I’m not someone else,” Emma sighed. “I’m me and I can’t think beyond Henry right now.”

Hook shook his head. “I’m not asking you to, Swan.”

“You make me!” Emma’s eyes snapped open. She winced, glancing back to the liberated undergrowth -still no signs of Neal- before pointing a finger at him, the glare scrunching her nose and creasing her eyebrows. “You and Neal make me with this stupid game you two are playing.”

His mouth clamped shut. Yeah, served him right. His breathing was just as quiet, and then he nodded, releasing a small sigh and closing his eyes lightly. “For that, I apologize,” he said, bowing his head. 

Emma snorted. “At least one of you is sorry,” she muttered. It didn’t seem like Neal would admit he was sorry for making her the collateral anytime soon. She pressed her lips together and shook her head, a need to say how sorry she was widening her eyes as she looked at him. “Listen, if I were someone else-”

“Why say that?” he demanded icily, and she blinked when his jaw ticked, vein popping out on the side of his forehead like...maybe he was okay with a wounded heart that hadn’t properly healed in ten years. His eyes seared into her as his lips set in a straight line, expression taking on a seriousness she didn’t expect. “I don’t wish you to be anyone other than yourself, darling.”

Really?

She scoffed, straying the focus away from her racing heart for his sake and for hers. “Yeah but if we had met under different circumstances, if maybe...the _point is_ if I were someone else, the entire room might fall away and to you i’d be the only one in this place, but I know where I stand.” Right on the edge, always right on the edge with him. Emma sighed, and gestured between them. “This, whatever this is, it’s not worth the fight.” 

Her superpower threw up red flags, waving them wildly, begging she surrender. Not a chance in hell.

Hook tilted his head, squinting as he took a step closer, so close his chest brushed hers, and his eyes searched her face, like he was trying to figure out if she really believed the crap she was saying. Hopefully the red flags weren’t making themselves so obvious there too. “Perhaps you might think this isn’t. But you are, Emma.”

A shiver surged down her spine, making her stand straighter, trying to demonstrate the butterflies flapping their wings in her stomach who was boss. Pretty useless though since the sound of her name on his lips, the way he caressed it with his accent, and breathed out the letters drew her feet forward. “Maybe,” Emma nodded, lifting a corner of her mouth as the other fell in resignation. “But when we get back to Storybrooke, I’m fine walking home alone.” 

“I don’t object,” he said, the smallest of smiles glinting on his lips. “Simply know, that if you so wish it, I will accompany you, no matter what you’ve said.”

“Why?” she yelled, frown springing in a flash as the invisible force of abandonment pulled her by the shoulders. “This is not a contest, Hook.”

“Isn’t it?” he questioned, dipping his chin a bit and arching his eyebrows slowly. “You’re going to have to choose, Emma, because neither one of us is going to give up.” She hissed through her nose, glancing into the juggle for a way to avoid the sincerity taking residence on his face and smoothing his handsome aspects. “But my wanting to be there, at any moment you so desire, it doesn’t derive from whatever loathing Baelfire and I have stumbled into.”

“You want this?” Emma breathed. 

“More than you can accept, yes.”

“Still,” Emma sighed, pushing the hesitation, the _maybe I want this a little bit too_ to the deepest, darkest corner of her mind. “The only thing I have to choose right now is the best way to get my son back.”

“And you will.”

Her foot dropped hard on the ground as she leaned into his space, doubt widening her eyes. “You think so?” 

His smile shot straight through the bricks, piercing her heart with his certainty. “I’ve yet to see you fail.”

Emma frowned. “I meant what I said, Hook, it was a one time thing. Don’t think any of this is gonna change my mind.” 

“I do hope it will.” His eyes bored into hers. “I hope I’ve assured you you are Emma to me, no one else but Emma. And this, what you’re doing for your lad, is already brave even if you’re yet to see it.”

“Stop,” she whispered.  
  
His eyebrows furrowed and he shook his head slightly, shaking her decision with him. “Stop what, exactly?”

“Stop accepting me, stop reading me, just stop everything,” she cried brokenly.

The sides of his mouth ticked weakly. “I’m afraid I can’t.”

She opened her mouth, but her gaze drifted to dried-blood smearing his cheek and she stumbled forward, an odd, tingling sensation awakening in her palm as she raised her hand to do what? His eyes stayed on her face the entire time, but she chose to focus on her fingertips dancing lightly and touching his skin tentatively, flinching when he flinched and quickly retreating her hand to her breast when she pressed too hard under his cheekbone.

“Your cut,” Emma accused, glaring at him and the gapping gash. She slapped his arm. “What the hell, the cutlass scratched you and you didn’t say anything? Idiot.”

“Pirate,” he grinned.

He’d stepped closer. 

They fell silent as the word hung in the suddenly heavy air, thick with the current of electricity flowing between their bodies as she stumbled slightly into his space and he joined her not even half a second later. 

Their chests met in the middle as her hand landed on the lapel, fingers splaying over the smooth leather and curling them in. Her eyes fluttered closed as he tilted his head, lips so tempting, so warm when they brushed hers barely, gently, and she opened her already panting mouth when he swiped his tongue along her bottom lip, seeking permission and getting it when she allowed their lips to slant and their tongues to spiral together slowly, languidly moving their heads in time with their growing impatient kisses as her arm slid around his neck and swallowed his moans.

Cupping the back of his head to keep his mouth pressed hotly against hers, his fingers slipped past her ear and into her hair, tangling with the strands as fast his tongue found hers and swiftly captured her sigh. 

They finally broke away, gasping for air, panting against each other’s mouth as their beating pulses slowly decreased to its normal rate and their hearts stopped hammering violently against their chests. 

“Just know that when you do succeed,” he muttered, uncurling a tendril from his finger and tucking it into place behind her ear, smiling largely when she didn’t protest, too far gone in his taste to do anything but nod. “Well that’s where the fun begins.”

“Idiot,” she smirked and his hooded eyes matched hers as she leaned in, lips chasing after Killian’s - _Killian’s_ \- and so what if she wanted-

“Guys!” They jumped apart, spinning on opposite directions. “Think I found it.” 

Neal appeared into the clearing and handed the cutlass to her unsteady hand, fingers cramped from holding onto Killian’s lapel so tightly. Neal narrowed his eyes at them, obviously taking note of their swollen lips, but before she could come up with a semi-plausible excuse, Killian nodded curtly and walked past them. Her waist sought him, gaze longing after him as he disappeared behind branches, tripping over something and grumbling a curse when a hand wrapped around her forearm. 

Emma snapped her head around. “Neal, what are you-”

“I heard everything,” he said, brown eyes somber and sounding nearly _disappointed in her_. Seriously? He shrugged, lips thrusting upwards like he’d won. “And you’re right, Em. You’re not someone else.”

Killian was right.

She was just Emma.

So she tugged her arm out of his grasp and followed her one time thing into the darkness.

**Author's Note:**

> \- Song: Someone else  
> By: Beth Crowley
> 
> -Thoughts?


End file.
